Tag Archives: Yury Luzhkov

While watching the Bank of Moscow scandal unfold, two questions come to mind. First, the Bank of Moscow held the accounts of Moscow’s city budget, and the deficit of the bank is now $14 billion. In essence this means that the city’s funds have been stolen from the bank. How did this happen?

The second question is whether VTB will file a lawsuit in London courts against former Bank of Moscow president Andrei Borodin. It appears that the goal is not to extradite him back to Russia but to put him behind bars in Britain.

Borodin somehow received 20 percent of the shares of the bank, but it is difficult to say whether he was an actual or nominal shareholder.

[The first week in November], two seemingly unconnected events took place in Moscow. Yet, considered together, they have are of tremendous importance and serve to weaken the rule of law in Russia.

[On] Tuesday, imprisoned former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky delivered a passionate speech at the end of his kangeroo court proceedings about the corroding lawlessness plaguing his country. As Khodorkovsky addressed the court, masked Russian police SWAT teams armed with Kalashnikovs raided the National Reserve Bank in Moscow. The bank belongs to Alexander Lebedev, another billionaire political opponent of the Putin-Medvedev “tandemocracy.”

Deutsche-Welle, one of the best sources of reporting on Russia, has published a brilliant exposure piece on Sergei Sobyanin, the handpicked, unelected new mayor of the city of Moscow.

Here is what Sobyanin said after he was “elected” governor of Tyumen provience in 2000: “There is opposition, look! Only 24 out of 25 deputies have voted for me.” Such a remark could easily have been made by a stooge of the Soviet empire, and indeed quite often was. Now, Sobyanin has been placed in charge of one of the world’s largest cities by exectutive fiat of the Kremlin, and he will be its slave. Democratic politics at the local level has been absolutely and finally extinguished, and it has been carried out by the so-called “liberal” reformer Dima Medvedev.

In our last issue we carried two items illustrating the dire consequences of unchecked power being given to Russia’s cadre of spies and its police officers. Today, we turn our attention to the Russian military.

Last week we were appalled and terrified by the spectacle that unfolded in the Siberian city of Perm. The indispensable and brilliant Paul Goble, translating from the Russian press, reports how Russian army units there are in open rebellion against their officers because large numbers of the young recruits are Muslim and they face daily oppression from their racist Slavic “brothers.” What the Kremlin does not seem to have noticed while ignoring this scathing, barbaric racism is that its victims are being armed and trained to kill.

The upshot of the rebellion was the Russian officers were forced to turn to Muslim clerics and beg for their assistance in quelling the insurrection.

The dismissal of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov highlights the fact that “there is no Russia,” a Moscow analyst argues. Instead, “there is only a Sovietoid copy which has been converted into the RF Corporation,” something everyone involved needs to recognize in order not to continue to pay a high price for making a mistake on this point.

In an essay posted on the Folksland.net portal, Aleksey Shornikov says that “the Russian Federation is not a state, although it dresses itself up in the clothes of a power. The RF is instead a commercial company or as it can be expressed in terms familiar to us, ‘RF Inc.’”

According to Shornikov, “the various European East Indian companies” prefigured the form that RF Inc. has taken since 1991. The most famous of these was the British one in India, a public-private partnership chartered by the king that performed many of the functions of a state but was organized and acted like a corporation pursuing profit.

An interesting thing happened a few days ago. Moscow “Mayor” Yuri Luzhkov was fired by Russian “President” Dima Medvedev, and the so-called Mayor was soon lashing out publicly at the so-called President. Luzhkov, of course, is a very popular fellow in many Russian quarters, and his words carry weight. Not a word was said about Vladimir Putin. In fact, it was almost as if Putin had planned the whole thing, just to kill two competitive birds with one stone as he prepares to become “president for life.”

Reading tea leaves — or coffee grounds if you happen to be in Russia — won’t help anyone guess who the next mayor of Moscow will be. My prediction is that our leaders will opt for the candidate who is least likely to make a play for the Kremlin in the future.

But Yury Luzhkov’s firing has made one thing very clear: United Russia is not a political party at all. In reality, it is little more than a superficial label or a badge worn by the overwhelming majority of high-ranking, opportunistic state employees. Examples of genuine parties include the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in Mexico; the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; the Communist Party of China and the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan.

NOTICE: This blog quotes from source material, and links to it. When a post contains quotes and original material, the quotes are in ordinary print and the original in boldface. See "About LR" in the title bar for copyright notice.

Supporting La Russophobe

La Russophobe does not solicit or accept financial support from any source. If you would like to show your support for LR and your opposition to the rise of dictatorship in Russia, the easiest way is to create a Digg or StumbleUpon or Delicious account and use it to favorite some of our posts. LR also welcomes your e-mail comments and submissions for publication, and we urge you to support the effort to boycott of the Sochi Olympics.